How to Create Harmony Throughout Your Garden

Rebekah
May 23
2 min read

In spring, it can be tempting to come to the garden center and pick up one (or three!) of everything in bloom. Maybe not literally everything in bloom, but you understand what we are saying! It can be easy to purchase several different plants and then come home and wonder how to incorporate everything you love into your garden. That's where landscape elements such as repetition, color, texture, and form come into play.

Repetition: Often, unless it is a focal point, plants look amazing in groupings of odd numbers, such as 3 or 5. If you have several gardening beds you're working on, you can repeat these groupings throughout both beds or repeat with something similar in shape, size, and color to achieve harmony.

Color: Gardens can be beautiful with every color of the rainbow! However, if you're looking for a harmonious look throughout your entire garden, picking 2 or 3 main colors to work with will help create that. For example, if you chose blooms of pink, white, and purple, you could still add several different foliage colors to add extra color (such as lime green, blue-green, and dark green foliage).

Texture: Our eyes love to see texture, and our brains unconsciously see varying textures as interesting to look at. By adding plants with varying foliage, such as repetitons of upright foliage (such as Irises or certain ornamental grasses), fuzzy foliage (such as Lamb's Ear), and/or delicate foliage (such as laceleaf Japanese Maples or ferns), you create added interest in the garden. By repeating these textures throughout, using a variety of plants, you add harmony to the garden.

Form: To create more interest and harmony, try adding different forms to your garden. For example, try not to add all mounded shapes to your garden. Add mounded, spikey, weeping, etc., and repeat those forms at least one other time in the garden to achieve a harmonious look.

Also: Take photos of your gardening beds before coming to the nursery. Also, know the sunlight your area receives. You can go to our Plant Finder and gather ideas of plants to look for while here at the nursery. Please know that although we grow all of the plants on our Plant Finder, it is not linked to our current inventory, so a particular plant may not be in stock when you come to the nursery (but we may have something similar in stock!).